Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Just Ask

Shocked to find in today’s mail a bill from the
cardiologist's office for $50, listed as “No show appointment fee...requires 24 hour notice for
cancellation.” I wasn't too shocked, though, to notice that “24 hour” should have been hyphenated. Yes, I simply forgot.Yes, it’s written on the calendar, but lately it can be hard to remember what day it is. Yes, I must have wasted the
doctor’s valuable time, though when I finally did see him, a few days after that, it was
for all of one-and-a-half minutes. (Should that have been hyphenated? I'm not sure. It'd be safer to make it two minutes. But I digress.) Yes, I approve of moving every bit of the job down to the least paid person who can
handle it, and I have no quarrel with the nice physician’s assistant. Yes, things are just fine, come
back in six months.

But if I had a $50 charge every time I forgot
something these days, I’d be bankrupt before the end of the month.

So I started to write a check, muttering to the
cleaning lady, who happened to run the vacuum cleaner into the office right
then. “Oh, that happened to me,” she said happily.“I just called them up and asked were they
trying to teach me a lesson or what, and they dropped the fee.”

So wotthehell, I called Them up myself.After all, now that I’m old I
feel Entitled.To everything.“If you think you have a way to make me remember
things,” I said on the phone, “you could make a fortune.” And she, whoever she
was, just laughed and said “I’ll take it off your record.”She didn’t sound a bit surprised.I got the impression she
expects the call. I guess it's part of the ritual. I mention this in case it is useful to you some
day.For that matter, here’s another
one:I was unhappy – horrified may be
the better word – with this month's Time Warner cable bill. Of those hundreds of channels I watch about a dozen -- news, public television, and any movie with no commercials. So why didn't I think of calling them before? Now I still have all those useless channels but my
monthly charge has somehow been cut in half.“This
month’s already been paid,” said the nice gentleman whose goal in life is
to keep callers from transferring to Dish TV.“But I’ll give you a credit; it’ll show up on
your bill." I'll check it out. And I'll get back to the doctor in six months. If I remember.

1 comment:

Thanks for the tip about copping a plea in such cases. At the rate my memory is going downhill these days, I may need the advice sooner rather than later. (I attended a dear friend's memorial service this past weekend, and found my recollection at fault on at least three points in the course of the reminiscing.)

About Me

Okay. For starters, I'm 91 now, but I'm not changing the blog title. This is my 6th year of blogging. This being old is interesting. If I start telling you what it's like, understand, I AM NOT WHINING. it's more along the lines of -- I feel like an anthropologist exploring a new world -- Margaret Mead telling you what life is like on New Guinea. (If you're old, you have heard of her. If you aren't, you're welcome here anyhow.)